Conflated Conversations
by iviscrit
Summary: Hiroshi Sato travels to Zaofu for the city's first time hosting a conference for the brightest minds in modern engineering. The young guide assigned to show him around bears a resemblance to his daughter, and it proves difficult to not conflate the two. TLDR: Hiroshi meets his future murderer in a very different setting. For coppermarigolds.


_For the lovely coppermarigolds. Sorry I suck at titles… also, check out terra-7's kickass accompanying art! _

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"Are you sure I can't come with you?" Asami said petulantly, folding her arms over her chest and leaning in the doorway as she watched him pack. "Can't you have Xin watch the company for you while you're away? I'm not sure I'm ready to take over for you just yet."

"Everything will be fine, my dear," Hiroshi said gently. ""You'll be perfectly fine without me for a couple of days, won't you? I trust you more than any executive. I expect to come back and find profit projections for the next six months in my short absence."

"I know," his daughter said, walking over to help him with his bags as they finished up the packing, "I just wish I could go with you. It sounds so exciting, going to the city that revolutionized transportation with the mag-train."

"You're still young," he said, kissing her forehead as the staff came to drive him to the station. "You'll have plenty of time to revolutionize the train system in our own city in good time, Asami."

"Thanks, Dad." She hugged him goodbye, and for a moment Hiroshi felt a twinge of regret at not taking her along. "Have a good trip. Tell me everything about it as soon as you get back!"

"I will," Hiroshi said, his eyes soft and his smile encouraging. "I promise."

It was sunset by the time the train reached Zaofu. Hiroshi Sato stood and stretched as the landscape changed from a stretch of Western Desert to mountainous greenery, the gleaming platinum domes finally coming into view. "Incredible workmanship," he said, the admiration evident in his voice as he walked to the window and watched as the domes grew ever-closer. "Incredible," he repeated. If only Asami could see it.

It was the first time the conference was being held in Zaofu, he mused, the setting sun glinting off his glasses and casting the scene into a golden glow. The sky was painted with broad strokes of red and orange, and as the mag train glided into the first port, its speed finally slowing over the track, the train's interior was cast into darkness. A cool blue light came on overhead, and Hiroshi stroked his beard, regarding it appraisingly. It was a pure, cool blue, the glow surprisingly strong in the darkened car. He looked around to find that the smaller blinking lights of the train car were of the same nature, and another rush of respect for the inventor behind the light-emitting diodes rose in the inventor's brain. The invention must have been entirely new; Beifong's patent was still pending.

A call from the conductor prompted Hiroshi to leave his seat and he hurried to the port, taking the automated platform to the ground level to meet his guide. A guard stood waiting attentively, her helmet under her arm and her torso encased in spotless metal. She saluted as soon as he was close enough to make out her face, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. The girl was young, that much was evident. She couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty years old, and he found himself thinking of his daughter with a sudden bout of homesickness.

"Mr. Sato," the girl said, proffering her hand. "I'm here to take you to the Beifong estate."

"It is a delight to be here," Hiroshi said, shaking hands with the girl. For one so slight and young, she had a surprisingly firm grip. His fingers felt slightly crushed in her grasp, and as she turned and gestured for him to follow, he heard the clink of metal with her every step. "What is your name?" he asked, sitting opposite the young guard once they had boarded the city train and were whisked through the Zaofu cityscape. The domes were closing around them, casting long shadows across the train's interior and over his companion's face. They closed like petals, the mechanized whirr of the gears audible as the city shrouded itself in platinum, the dusky sky overhead dwindling into ever-shrinking slits between the metal partitions and the diode lights blinking from the tops of skyscrapers.

"Kuvira," she said, saluting. "I'm the captain of the security force for the state."

"The captain?" he said. "That must be quite an accomplishment. You look to be about the same age as my daughter, back home."

"I'm twenty," Kuvira said, and it was hard to miss the proud set to her shoulders as the words left her. Hiroshi guessed she knew her position to be hard-won and well deserved; taking on that sort of responsibility at a young age was not unfamiliar to him, and he smiled.

"My daughter Asami is two years younger," he said. "You even look something like her," he added, observing the long-lashed green eyes and the dark, silky hair. "Do you know anything about engineering, by any chance?"

"No," Kuvira confessed, a dreamy smile passing over her face and cracking her polite stoicism. In that instant, with a smile befitting her youth transforming her features, her flinty jade eyes suddenly languid and gentle, she could have been Asami's sister. "But my-" and then she seemed to catch herself and was silent, her eyes inscrutable once again.

Hiroshi waited with interest for her to continue to little avail, and he felt his mustache quiver as he suppressed a smile. He had seen that look on the girl's face often enough in the more recent years, back home. He knew better than to ask his daughter about a little infatuation, and conflating his young guide with his daughter would be a poor move; she appeared nothing if not professional. "The lights on the train," he said conversationally, "like those lights over there. Are they diode lights?"

"They are," she said. "At least, I think they are. If those sorts of lights work through-" her brow furrowed as she tried to recall terms and explanations outside her area of expertise- "electroluminescence, they certainly are."

"They do," he said with a nod and a hint of envy in his voice. "Outstanding. That's about two years ahead of our production at Future Industries." A trace of a smile spread over the girl's face, and her hand reflexively twitched at the radio on her hip. "Who is the inventor?" Hiroshi prodded. "One of the employees, or an independent engineer..?"

"The governor's son," Kuvira said. "The majority of what you're about to see is her husband's design, though the later innovations were built and improved upon by her son."

The train stopped soon after and Hiroshi followed the young captain through the sprawling grounds of the Beifong estate. The very grounds were sculpted from the earth, with metal that never seemed to rust rimming the sides of the cut-stone stairways. "A nickel-aluminum alloy?" he asked, half to himself and half to her.

"Yes," she said, stopping and squatting next to him, running her finger along the edge and stripping away a layer of the plate with the unmistakeable finesse of a master of her craft. "I helped install the rimming myself," she added, returning the layer to the edge.

"That's very impressive," Hiroshi said, following her as she straightened and led him through the darkened grounds up to the mansion. "What about chrome-nickel alloys, can you bend those as well?"

"Anything that's not platinum, I can work with," she said shortly. A titanium sculpture of a hummingbird rested on a smooth pillar of stone, grotesque and twisted in the light from the tiny blue diodes hemming the pathway. As if to prove her point, she contorted her hand into a claw and flattened the bird, the pleasant clink of her armor replaced by the grating of metal-on-metal plates as she screwed up her face in concentration and her muscles tensed beneath her sleeve.

"I see." He was reminded all the more of Asami, watching the inky black hair ripple with her movements and the lethality concealed behind the lithe frame and innocent face. It was oddly endearing, and he concealed a chuckle at the girl's little display. "That's a tremendous accomplishment in its own right. Have you considered utilizing metalbending to speed up production of finer parts?"

"I'm the wrong person to ask," Kuvira said, returning the sculpture to its previous shape with surprising ease, smiling at him as she threw open the doors to the house and led him through a long hallway of artfully segmented windows and tasteful carpeting. "The Beifongs will see you now," she said, opening the final door in their route, and stepping back as Suyin, her husband, and a young man looking to be a few years older than Asami stood to receive him.

"Hiroshi Sato, I'm Suyin Beifong," the woman said, stepping forward and greeting him with a warm handshake. "We're so excited to be hosting you for the conference- I was concerned when I heard the train was late, Varrick's been here with his assistant for two hours already, and the head of Cabbage Corp. is here too. I hope my guard captain made your tour enjoyable?"

"Very," Hiroshi said, glancing back to look at the girl, her arms at her sides and a slight grin on her face as she silently watched the family. He returned his attention to the husband and their oldest son. "And this must be the young man responsible for the diode lights. Very impressive, son. My daughter has always helped me in the lab as well. It's good to keep the business in the family."

The boy nodded. "Thank you, sir. Dad and I look forward to hearing your input on the larger mech. I've been interested ever since the merger with the United Republic weapons manufacture."

"Su? Am I free for the evening?" Kuvira's voice cut in from her place by the door.

Suyin Beifong nodded, waving her off dismissively. "Yes, that will be all. Thank you, Kuvira."

Kuvira still hovered in the doorway. "Are we expected to continue on with rehearsal while you and Baatar Senior conduct the conference? The recital is next week, we can't skip a day-"

"Don't worry about it, dear," Suyin said. "You know the choreography as well as me. You'll be just fine without me for a couple of days, won't you? Mr. Sato, let me show you..."

Hiroshi glanced back over his shoulder and gave the girl an encouraging smile and a little wave. Suyin's words had instilled a twinge of regret as he remembered an identical dejected expression in a similar pair of green eyes that morning. Kuvira returned his gesture with a formal salute, and he smiled as he saw something behind her eyes soften. There was little time to dwell on it, however; excitement for the conference returned to the forefront of his mind as he followed Suyin, mixing with a warm, paternal rush of affection as he again conflated his impression of the girl with fond thoughts of his daughter back home, awaiting his return.

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**A/N: does it hurt? BECAUSE POST-S4 HE'LL NEVER RETURN HAHA I'M FUNNY**

**Also, LED lights were out in the late twenties. So Baatar brought them to the Avatarverse. I basically headcanon him as a precocious Bill Gates/Pranav Mistry kinda guy for his time. Hope you liked it, Copper!**

**Also OF COURSE I had to reference Baavira in a fic where it has no place. OF COURSE. #ZaiIsTrash**


End file.
